


All American Boy

by orphan_account



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-04
Updated: 2014-03-04
Packaged: 2018-01-14 11:30:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1264849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Top Ten Reasons Derek Hale is in Deep Trouble<br/>10. His big brother is the most popular boy in school<br/>9. Her little sister is a certified genius<br/>8. He's in love with her big brother's girlfriend's sister<br/>7. He got caught selling celebrity portraits in school<br/>6. And now he's being forced to take art classes<br/>5. He's just saved the president of the United States from an assassination attempt<br/>4. So the whole world thinks he is a hero<br/>3. Even though Derek knows he is far, far from being a hero<br/>2. And now he's been appointed teen ambassador to the UN</p><p>And the number-one reason Derek's life is over?</p><p>1. The president's son just might be in love with him</p><p>Basically Meg Cabot's "All American Girl" with more Sterek</p>
            </blockquote>





	All American Boy

**Author's Note:**

> I basically took the text of "All American Girl" by Meg Cabot and changed a few points in it. The majority of the plot is hers.

Okay, here are the top ten reasons why I can’t stand my brother Scott:

10\. I get all his hand-me-downs, sometimes even his boxers

9\. When I refuse to wear his hand-me-down, especially his boxers, I get the bif lecture about waste and the environment. Look, I am truly concerned about the environment. Bu that does not mean I want to wear my brother’s old boxers.

8\. He is always making remarks about how I could be nicer to people.

7\. Her conversations on the phone go like this: “No way…. So what did he say?…Then what did she say?…No way…. That is so totally untrue…. I do not. I so do not…. Who said that?.... Well, it isn’t true….No, I do not…. I do not like her.... Well, okay, maybe I do. Oh, gotta go, call-waiting.”

6\. He is a lacrosse player. All right? A LACROSSE PLAYER. Like it isn’t enough he has to run around a field waving a stick. No, he has to do it practically every night. And since Mom and Dad are fanatical about this mealtime-is -family-time thing, guess what we are usually doing at five thirty? And who is even hungry then?

5\. All of my teachers go: “You know, Derek, when I had your brother in this calss two tears ago, I never had to remind him to:

a) double space

b) carry the one

c) capitalize his nouns in Deutsch

d) remember his swimsuit

e) take off his headphones during morning announcements

f) stop drawing on his pants”

4\. He has a girlfriend. And not just any girlfriend, either, but a non-cheerleader girlfriend, something totally unheard of in the social hierarchy of our school. (Don’t get me wrong Allison is not my type but she comes with Kate.) And, Kate happens to be an urban rebel like me, only she really goes all out, you know, black army surplus clothes, Doc Martens and the straight Ds and all. Plus she has her cartilage pierced.

But even though he is not “book smart,” Kate is very talented and creative artisically. For instance, she is always getting her painting of disenfranchised American youths hung up in the caf. And nobody them, the way they would if they were mine. Jack’s paintings, I mean.

As if that is not cool enough, Mom and Dad completely hate her because of her not working up to her potential and getting suspended for her antiauthoritarianism and calling them Talia and Richard to their faces instead of Mr. and Mrs. Hale.

It is totally unfair that Scott should not only have a girlfriend but a girlfriend whose sister our parents can’t stand. When I have been praying my entire life for a girlfriend they can’t stand, practically.

Although actually at this point any kind of date would be acceptable.

3\. In spite of the fact that he is dating a normal person instead of a cheerleader, Scott remains one of the most popular guys in school, routinely getting invited to parties and dances every weekend, so many that she could not possibly attend them all, and often says things like, “Hey, Derek, why don’t you and Erica go instead?” even though if Erica and I ever stepped into a party like that we would be vilifies as sophomore poseurs and thrown out onto the street.

2\. He gets along with Mom and Dad-except for the whole Kate-tagging-along-with-Allison thing-and always has. He even gets along with our little sister, Lydia, who goes to a special school for the intellectually gifted and is practically an idiot savant.

But the number-one reason I can’t stand my sister Lucy would have to be:

1\. He told on me about the celebrity drawings. 

1

He says he didn't mean to. He says he found them in my room, and they were so good he couldn't help showing them to Mom.

Of course, it never occurred to Scott that he shouldn't have been in my room in the first place. When I accused him of completely violating my constitutionally protected right to personal privacy, she just looked at me like, Huh? even though he is fully taking U.S. Government this semester.

His excuse is that she was looking for his mouthguard.

Hello. Like I would borrow anything of his. Especially something that had in his mouth.

Instead of his mouth guard, which of course I didn't have, Scott found this week's stash of drawings, and he presented them to Mom at dinner that night.

"Well," Mom said in this very dry voice. "Now we know how you got that C-minus in German, don't we, Derek?"

This was on account of the fact that the drawings were in my German notebook.

"Is this supposed to be that guy from The Patriot?" my dad wanted to know. "Who is that you've drawn with him? Is that . . . is that Erica?"

"German," I said, feeling that they were missing the point, "is a stupid language."

"German isn't stupid," my little sister Lydia informed me. "The Germans can trace their heritage back to ethnic groups that existed during the days of the Roman Empire. Their language is an ancient and beautiful one that was created thousands of years ago."

"Whatever," I said. "Did you know that they capitalize all of their nouns? What is up with that?"

"Hmmm," my mother said, flipping to the front of my German notebook. "What have we here?"

My dad went, "Derek, what are you doing drawing pictures of Erica on the back of a horse with that guy from The Patriot?"

"I think this will explain it, Richard," my mother said, and she passed the notebook back to my dad.

In my own defense, I can only state that, for better or for worse, we live in a capitalistic society. I was merely enacting my rights of individual initiative by supplying the public -- in the form of most of the student population at John Adams Preparatory School -- with a product for which I saw there was a demand. You would think that my dad, who is an international economist with the World Bank, would understand this.

But as he read aloud from my German notebook in an astonished voice, I could tell he did not understand. He did not understand at all.

"You and Josh Hartnett," my dad read, "fifteen dollars. You and Josh Hartnett on a desert island, twenty dollars. You and Justin Timberlake, ten dollars. You and Justin Timberlake under a waterfall, fifteen dollars. You and Keanu Reeves, fifteen dollars. You and -- " My dad looked up. "Why are Keanu and Josh more than Justin?"

"Because," I explained, "Justin has less hair.”

"Oh," my dad said. "I see." He went back to the list.

“You and Keanu Reeves white-water rafting, twenty dollars. You and Jennifer Lawrence, fifteen dollars.You and Jennifer Lawrence white-water rafting twenty-”

But my mom didn’t let him go on for much longer.

“Clearly,” she said in her courtroom voice-my mom is an environmental lawyer; one thing you do not want to do is anything that would make Mom ues her courtroom voice-"Derek is having trouble concentrating in German class. The reason why he is having trouble concentrating in German class appears to be because he is suffering from not having an outlet for all his creative energy. I believe if such an outlet were provided for him, his grades in German class would improve dramatically.”

Which would explain why the next day my mom came home from work, pointed at me, and went, “Tuesdays and Thursdays, from three thirty to five thirty, you will now be taking art lessons, young man.”

Talk about harsh.

Apparently it has not occurred to my mother that I can draw perfectly well without ever having had a lesson. Except for, you know, in school. Apparently my mother doesn’t realize that art lessons, far from providing me with an outlet for my creative energy, are just going to utterly stamp out any natural ability and individual style I might have had. How will I ever be able to stay true to my own vision, like van Gogh, with someone hovering over my shoulder, telling me what to do?

“Thanks,” I said to Scott when I ran into him a little while later in the bathroom we shared. He was relacing his lacrosse stick, even though I’ve told him a thousand times to do it in his room.

Scott looked over the stick at me. “What’d I do?”

I couldn’t believe he didn’t know. “You told on me,” I cried, “about the whole drawing thing!”

“What?” said Scott, “I thought I was doing you a favor.”

“A favor?” I was shocked. “I got into big trouble because of what you did! Now I have to go to some stupid, lame art class twice a week after school, when I could be, you know...watching TV.”

Scott rolled his eyes. “You so dont get it, do you? You’re my brother. I can’t just stand by and let you become the biggest freak of the entire school. You won’t participate in extracurriculars. You wear that black leather jacket all the time. You won’t fix your hair. I mean, I had to do something. This way, who knows? Maybe you’ll be a famous artist. Like Georgia O’Keeffe.”

“Do you even know what Georgia OKeeffe is famous for painting, Scott?” I asked, and when he said no, I told him:  
Vaginas. That’s what Georgia O’Keeffe was famous for painting.

Or as Lydia put it, as she came ambling past with her nose buried in the latest installment of the Anne Rice series, with which she is obsessed, “Actually, Ms. O’Keeffes organic abstract images are lush representations of flowers that are strongly sexual in symbolic content.”

I told Scott to ask Kate if he didn’t believe me. But Scott said he didn’t really talk to Kate and he and Allison don’t talk discuss things like that with one another.

I was all, “You mean vaginas?” but Scott said no, art.

I dont get this. I mean, he spends most of his time with Allison (and by extension Kate because her father won’t her go anywhere without her), and yet they never discuss art? I can tell you, if I ever get a date, we are going to discuss everything with one another.

Even art. Even vaginas. (Ok, maybe not vaginas.)

 

2

Erica couldn’t believe it about the drawing lessons.

“But you already know how to draw!” she kept saying.

I, of course, couldn't have agreed more. Still, it was good to know I wasn't the only person who thought my having to spend every Tuesday and Thursday from three thirty until five thirty at the Alan Deaton Art Studio was going to be a massive waste of time.

“That is just so like Scott,” Erica said as we walked Isaac through the Bishops Garden on Monday after school. The Bishops Garden is part of the grounds of the National Cathedral, where they have all the funerals for any important people who die in D.C. It is only a five-minute walk from where we live, in Celeland Park, to the National Cathedral. Which is good, because it is Manet's favorite place to chase squirrels and bust in on couples who are making out in the gazebo and stuff.

Which is another thing: who is going to walk Isaac while I am at the Alan Deaton Art Studio? Theresa, our housekeeper, won’t do it. She hates Isaac, even though he fully stopped chewing to the electrical chords.

Theresa says that it is bad enough that she has to clean up after all of us; over her dead body is she cleaning up after my eighty-pound Malamute.

“I can’t believe Scott did that”, Erica said. “I'm sure glad I don't have any siblings.” Erica is an only child-which is probably why we get along so well. She’s always wanted siblings. I’ve always wanted to be an only child. But she has no one smarter or more athletic than she is to be compared to.

Erica is so lucky.

“But if it hadn’t been Scott, it would have been Jackson,” she pointed out as we trudged along the narrow, twisty path through the gardens. “Jackson was totally onto you. I mean about only charging him and his friends.”

Which had been, really, the beauty of the whole thing. That I’d only been charging people like Jackson and his friends, I mean. Everyone else had gotten drawings for free.

Well, and why not? When, as a joke, I drew a portrait of Erica with her favorite celebrity of all time, Heath Ledger, word got around, and soon I had a waiting list of people who wanted pictures of themselves in the company of various hotties.

At first I didn’t even think about charging. I was more than glad to provide drawing to my friends for free, since it seemed to make them happy.

And then when the non-English-speaking kids in my school got wind of it and wanted portraits, too, well, I couldn’t very well charge them, either. I mean, if you just moved to this country-whether to escape oppression in your native land, or, like most of the non–English speakers at our school, because one of your parents was an ambassador or diplomat-no way should you have to pay for a celebrity drawing. You see, I know what it is like to be in a strange place where you don’t speak the language: it sucks. I learned this the hard way, thanks to Dad-who is in charge of the World Banks North African division. He moved us all to Morocco for a year when I was eight. It would have been nice if somebody there had given me some drawings of Justin Timberlake for free, instead of staring at me like I was a freak just because I didn’t know the Moroccan for “May I please be excused?” when I had to go to the bathroom.

Then I got hit by a bunch of requests for celebrity portraits from the kids in Special Ed. Well, I couldn’t charge people in Special Ed, either, on account of how I know what it is like to be in Special Ed. After we got back from Morocco, it was determined that my speech impediment-I said th instead of s, just like Cindy Brady-wasn’t something I was going to grow out of…not without some professional help. So I was forced to attend special speech and hearing lessons while everybody else was in music appreciation.

As is this were not bad enough, whenever I returned to my regular classroom, I was routiely mocked for my supposed stupidity by Jackson Whittemore-who’d been my best friend up until I’d left for Morocco. Then bam, I come back and he’s all “Derek who?”

It was like he didn't even remember how she used to come to my house to play GI Joe everyday after school. No, suddenly she was all about “going with” girls and running around at recess, trying to kiss them. The fact that I, as a fourth grader, would sooner have eaten glass then allowed a fellow fourth grader’s lips to touch mine-particularly Rhonda Muckinfuss or Greenberg, who were the class hotties that year-instantly branded me “immature (the th instead of s probably didn’t help much, either). Jackson dropped me like a hot potato.

Fortunately this only fueled my desire to learn to speak properly. The day I graduated from speech and hearing, I strode right up to Jackson and called him a stupid, slobbering, inconsiderate simpering sycophant.

We haven’t really spoken since.

So, figuring that people who are in Special Ed really need a break now and then-especially the ones who have to wear a helmet all the time due to being prone to seizures or whatever-I declared that, for them, my celebrity-drawing services were free, as they were for my friends and the non–English speakers at Adams Prep.

Really, I was like my own little UN, doling out aid, in the form of highly realistic renderings of Channing Tatum, to the underprivileged.

But it turned out that Jackson Whittemore, now president of the sophomore class and still an all-around pain in my rear, had a problem with this. Well, not with the fact that I wasn’t charging the non-English speakers, but with the fact that it turned out the only people I was charging were Jackson and his friends.

But what did he think? Like I was really going to charge Erica, who has been my best friend ever since I got back from Morocco and found out that Jackson had pulled an Anakin and gone over to the Dark Side? Erica and I totally bonded over Jackson’s mistreatment of us-Jackson still takes great delight in making fun of Erica’s knee-length skirts, which is all Mrs. Rheyes, Erica’s mom, will allow her to wear, being super Christian and all-and our mutual contempt for Rhonda Muckinfuss and Greenberg.

Oh, yeah. I’m definitely going to give free drawings of Halle Berry to someone like Jackson.

Not.

People like Jackson-maybe because he was never forced to attend speech and hearing lessons, much less a school where no one spoke the same language he did-cannot seem to grasp the concept of being nice to anyone who is not muscular, blond, and decked out in Abercrombie and Fitch from head to toe.

In other words, anyone who is not Jackson Whittemore.

Erica and I were talking about this on our way home from the cathedral grounds-Jaskcon, I mean, and his insufferability-when this car approached us and I saw my dad waving at us from behind the wheel.

“Hi, guys,” my mom said, leaning over my dad to talk to us, since we were closest to the driver’s side. “I don’t suppose either of you is interested in going to Scott’s game.”

“Mom,” Scott said from the backseat. He was in full lacrosse regalia. “Do not even try. They won’t come, and even if they do, I mean, think about Derek. He’d hate to be there.”

“Scott,” my dad said in a warning tone. He needn’t have bothered, however. I am quite used to Scott assuming what I do and don’t want.

It is all well and good for people like Scott, whose primary concern in life is not missing a single sale at Dick’s Sporting Goods. I mean, for Scott, the fact that they started selling Axe products in our local drugstore was cause for jubilation the likes of which had not been seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

I, however, am a little more concerned about world issues, such as the fact that three hundred million children a day go to bed hungry and that school art programs are invariably the first things cut whenever local boards of education find they are working at a deficit.

Which is why at the start of this school year, I dyed my entire wardrobe black to show that

a) I was in mourning for our generation, who clearly do not care about anything except what’s going to happen on Friends next week, and

b) fashion trends are for phonies like my brother.

And yeah, my mom nearly blew a capillary or two when she saw what I’d done. But hey, at least she knows one of her sons actually thinks about something other than sports.

My mom, unlike Scott, wasn’t about to give up on me, though. Which was why, there in the car, she put on a bright sunshiny smile, even though there was nothing to feel too sunshiny about, if you ask me. There was a pretty steady drizzle going on, and it was only about forty degrees outside. Not the kind of November day anyone—but especially someone completely lacking in school spirit, like me—would really want to spend sitting in some bleachers, watching a bunch of jocks-like my brother-chase a ball around, while girls in too-tight purple-and-white sweaters cheered them on.

“You never know,” my mom said to Scott from the front seat. “They might change their minds.” To us, she said, “What do you say, Derek? Erica? Afterwards Dad is taking us to Chinatown for dim sum.” She glanced at me. “I’m sure we can find a burger or something for you, Derek.”

“Sorry, Mrs. Hale,” Erica said. She didn’t look sorry at all. In fact, she looked downright happy to have an excuse not to go. Most school events are agony for Erica, given the comments she regularly receives from the In Crowd about her Laura Ashley-esque wardrobe (“Where’d you park your chuck wagon?” etc.). “I have to be getting home. Sunday is the day of—”

“—rest. Yes, I know.” My mom had heard this plenty of times before. Mr. Rheyes, who is a diplomat at the and makes Erica stay home that day every week. Erica had only been let out for a half-hour reprieve in order to return The Patriot (which she has seen seventeen times) to Potomac Video. The trip to the National Cathedral had totally been on the sly. But Erica figured since technically a visit to a church was involved, her parents wouldn’t get that mad if they found out about it.

“Richard.” Lydia, beside Scott in the backseat, looked up from her laptop long enough to convey her deep displeasure with the situation. “Talia. Give it up.”

“Dad,” my mom said, glaring at Lydia. “Dad, not Richard. And it’s Mom, not Talia.”

“Sorry,” Lydia said. “But could we get a move on? I only have two hours on this battery pack, you know, and I have three spreadsheets due tomorrow.”

Lydia, who at eleven should be in the sixth grade, goes to Horizon, a special school in Bethesda for gifted kids, where she is taking college-level courses. It is a geek school, as is amply illustrated by the fact that the son of our current president, who is a geek if there ever was one-the son, I mean; but now that I think about it, his dad’s one, too, actually-is enrolled there. Horizon is so geeky, they do not even hand out grades, just term reports. Lydia’s last term report said: “Lydia, while reading at a college level, has yet to catch up to her peers in emotional maturity, and needs to work on her ‘people skills’ next semester.”

But while her intellectual age might be forty, Lydia acts about six and a half, which is why she’s lucky she doesn’t go to a school for regularly intelligent people, like Scott and me: the Jackson Whittemores of the eleven-year-old set would eat her alive. Especially considering her lack of people skills.

My mother sighed. She was always very popular in high school, like Scott. She was, in fact, voted Miss School Spirit. My mom doesn’t understand where she went wrong with me. I think she blames my dad. My dad didn’t get voted anything in high school, because, like me, he spent most of his time while he was there fantasizing about being somewhere else.

“Fine,” Mom said to me. “Stay home then. But don’t—”

“—open the door to strangers,” I said. “I know.”

As if anyone ever even came to our door except the Bread Lady. The Bread Lady is the wife of a French diplomat who lives down the street from us. We don’t know her name. We just call her the Bread Lady, because every three weeks or so she goes mental, I guess from missing her native country so much, and bakes about a hundred loaves of French bread, which she then sells from door to door in our neighborhood for fifty cents each. I am addicted to the Bread Lady’s baguettes. In fact, they are practically the only thing I will eat, besides hamburgers, as I dislike most fruits and all vegetables, as well as a wide variety of other food groups, such as fish and anything with garlic.

The only people who ever comes to our door besides the Bread Lady are Allison and Kate. But we are not allowed to let Allison or Kate into the house when my parents or Theresa aren’t home. This is because of the time Kate shot out the windows of his dad’s Bethesda medical practice with her BB gun as a form of protest over Dr. Argent’s prescribing medications that had been tested on animals. My parents positively refuse to see that Kate was forced to take this drastic action in order to get her father to pay attention to the fact that animals are being tortured. They seem to think he did it just for the fun of it, which is so obviously untrue. Kate never does things just for the fun of them. She is seriously trying to make this world a better place. And Allison never goes anywhere without her sister.

Personally, I think the real reason Mom and Dad don’t want Kate or Allison in the house when they aren’t home is that they don’t want Allison and Scott making out. Which is a valid concern, but they could just say so, instead of hiding behind the BB gun defense. It is highly unlikely Kate is ever going to shoot out OUR windows. My mom is fully on the side of the good guys, seeing as how she’s an attorney for the Environmental Protection Agency.

“Come on, you guys,” Scott whined from the backseat. “I’m going to be late for the game.”

“And no drawing celebrities,” my mom called as Dad pulled away, “until all your German homework is done!”

Erica and I watched them go, the sedan’s wheels scrunching on the dead leaves in the road.

“I thought you weren’t allowed to draw celebrities anymore,” Erica said as we turned the corner.

Isaac, spotting a squirrel across the street, dragged me to the curb, nearly giving me whiplash.

“I can still draw celebrities,” I said, raising my voice to be heard over Issac’s hoarse barking. “I just can’t charge people for them.”

“Oh.” Erica considered this. Then she asked, in a pleading tone, “Then would you PLEASE draw Heath for me? Just once more? I promise I’ll never ask again.”

“I guess,” I said with a sigh, as if it were this very big pain in the neck for me.

Except of course it wasn’t. Because when you love something, you want to do it all the time, even if no one is paying you for it.

At least that’s how I felt about drawing.

Until I met Alan Deaton.

 

 


End file.
